KumaarShah 143 Report post Posted July 3, 2008 Paying hefty mobile bill? Probably a Trojan! NEW DELHI: Got an inflated mobile bill? Wondering who made all those extra calls? Well, it’s probably a Trojan! Your mobile could be under a Trojan attack and that’s why you never came to know about the misuse till the bill arrived. Hackers are now making merry with mobile phone networks, inventing new Trojans to send to mobile phones. The latest Trojans (like, a malicious code masked as a genuine message), making rounds in the global and Indian mobile networks are helping the premium adult calling and marketing sites based in the US to rake in more money. Corporate spying is also gaining traction with corporate rivals hiring detective agencies to track rival corporate’s emails on GPRS phones (2.5G). Mobile Trojans are programmes which can compromise address book and other data stored in a mobile or PDA phone. A mobile phone Trojan can sneak into your mobile phone when you download a ringtone via internet or click on a malicious SMS in the phone’s inbox. The latest premium-calling Trojans, however, attack just to gain financially. The infected handsets start dialing ISD premium (dating or adult calling) numbers which are billed at a very high rate, especially at night. Premium rate services in the UK range from £0.10/min to £1.50/min. In US, they can cost up to $5 per minute. These numbers are primarily used by horoscopes/psychics sites, phone sex, online gambling, contest voting, lottery, dating and party lines. The subscriber gets to know only when he or she receives a huge bill at the end of the month or when he wakes up in the morning and finds a low balance. “We often get these billing related cases,” confirms an official of a GSM operator. Other channels of Trojan infection apart from Bluetooth can be via USB ports, internet surfing and SMS/MMS. Some of the common Trojans these days are SymbOS.Sendtool built for Nokia phones. Once infected, this Trojan spreads via bluetooth to all nearby Bluetooth devices. CDropper is another family of Trojans which can replace your mobile phone software. Infojack is a Trojan built for Windows Mobile. Trojans can also steal your address phone book or send a marketing or nasty SMSs to all your phone contacts. To spy on corporate honchos, a Trojan can sit on a BlackBerry device and keep on sending all corporate mails to other devices. According to estimates there are about 300 mobile phone Trojans on the loose. Other Trojans are just built to freeze and delete all information from mobile. Mobile phone firms are trying hard to get better of the hackers. For instance, to secure your phone, you can download a 875 kb F-secure software on Nokia phones. BlackBerry is also offering advanced features to block attacks. Users of non-GPRS phones are, however, less likely to be affected as Trojans require some amount of memory (about 160 bytes) and attack mostly JAVA-enabled phones. var RN = new String (Math.random()); var RNS = RN.substring (2,11); b2 = ' '; if (doweshowbellyad==1) bellyad.innerHTML = b2; Source: The ET Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
commonman 228 Report post Posted July 4, 2008 (edited) One possible way to check - Just put your SIM in a cheap basic handset and use for a month. if there is significant difference in bill may be you need have your fancy handset get checked by an expert Edited July 4, 2008 by commonman Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rajat8676 0 Report post Posted July 4, 2008 No Windows Mobile OS virus yet?? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
